1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a location estimating apparatus and a location estimating method.
2. Related Background Art
In recent years, in order to specify an existing location of a mobile object such as a vehicle or a user carrying a cell phone, it is common practice to specify the present location of the mobile object by use of positioning information transmitted from the GPS (Global Positioning System) satellites and others. The positioning information in this case is location information at discontinuous time points and the location information contains a certain range of error. For this reason, there are proposals on attempts to increase the matching rate with an actual state. For example, a method proposed is to estimate the location of the mobile object while discarding information with low accuracy out of the positioning information measured (cf. Japanese Patent Applications Laid-Open No. 2002-341010 and Laid-Open No. 2002-341011). Another method proposed is to increase the matching rate with the actual state by use of other device information like acceleration sensor information (cf. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-90872).